


The Arms of Voltron

by squireofgeekdom



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: As is Shiro, Autistic Keith (Voltron), Autistic Pidge | Katie Holt, Canon Compliant, Ends post Season 2 but covers parts of Season 1 and 2, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, POV Pidge, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, The Holt Family is a major theme in this fic, autistic characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 17:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9502382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squireofgeekdom/pseuds/squireofgeekdom
Summary: The developing friendship of Pidge and Keith over the first and second seasons, and afterward.The arms of Voltron will hold them all together.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rimahadley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rimahadley/gifts).



Being different isn’t exactly new for Pidge.

 

Home has, for so long, meant the place where you weren’t different. With Matt, and their parents, they were all, as Dad had liked to say, different sundaes off the same sundae bar. 

 

It wasn’t that school was bad, school was accommodating of Pidge’s differences. But at home, it wasn’t accommodations, it was just the way it was, and that was - that was an all too important distinction. 

 

And then it all changed. 

 

Pidge had only met Shiro once before the mission, but Matt and Dad had both spoken highly of him, said that he was not only incredibly talented but kind and thoughtful, spoken of him with affection. 

 

(Dad had said the boy was going to grow up to be one of the Garrison’s greatest leaders. Pidge thinks about that a lot.)

 

Katie Holt’s file has an autism diagnosis. Pidge Gunderson’s does not. 

 

The Garrison is harder. 

 

Pidge does it anyway, does it in spite of the nights that they know, deep in their guts and bones, that they cannot, does it in spite of every time they have to lock themself inside a convenient storage closet with their laptop and all the lights off, does it in spite of every miserable group project and time they’re called on in class and fall into a tangent while other students snicker.

 

Pidge does it, but not in the way they expected. 

 

The dinner that Shiro had come over to their house, before the mission, the one time Shiro had met Pidge as Katie Holt, Shiro had been as kind as Matt and Dad had always said he was - asked dozens of questions about Pidge’s research, and listened, and asked more questions - questions that showed he was actually listening, even if he didn’t have Pidge’s background in CS, and Pidge could see why their family liked him.

 

That dinner terrified Pidge after they found Shiro - at first, they were sure Shiro would recognize them as Katie Holt, call them out on the lie. The haircut and wardrobe change had been enough to fool people who had seen Pidge only when they were being dragged out of an office, and then as pictures in a file - Shiro had actually talked to them, had time to look at their face in person, listen to their voice. When Shiro didn’t say anything, not at first, Pidge was sure that their - well, it wasn’t a disguise, was it, really? - that it had held.

 

Later, Pidge isn’t so sure. Later, Pidge thinks Shiro had known all along, and had waited for Pidge to say something. 

 

Shiro’s good like that. Just like Dad and Matt had said. 

 

Pidge thought for a while that maybe Shiro was so good about knowing things - like seeing when Pidge is on the verge of a meltdown - because he learned from Matt and Dad, that they’d given him the abridged List of Tips and Do’s and Don’ts the Holt’s had long perfected.

 

Now they wonder if Shiro knows because he’s used to dealing with Keith.

 

Okay, so it took them a while to figure Keith out, at least a little. They’d had an inkling, when Keith didn’t quite get jokes or references, or hung back a little from Lance and Hunk, staying quiet. 

 

But it wasn’t until Pidge tried to leave, when Keith said that everyone out there had a family -

 

It reminded Pidge of their mom. 

 

Mom had always been not-great at reading faces, body language. Pidge had learned early to just tell her how they were feeling - a practice that tended to extend through the family, which created some awkward moments at school early on, before they learned that other people were different. That they were different. But she had - she called it her wide-angle lens on empathy, and she’d said something very similar to what Keith had said, about families. It was during an argument with Dad, after she’d done something risky with the car while Matt and Pidge had been strapped in the back - Pidge had been too young to remember the details, but kids crossing the street had been involved in some way, and they still do remember what their Mom had said, that those had been someone’s children too. 

 

They only thought of this later, only put together the pieces that Keith might be like them later. If they had just understood sooner -

 

They regretted what they said, afterwards. 

 

“Yeah, I’m staying,” Pidge had said, slamming a drawer with unnecessary force as they put clothes back inside it. Keith had come to - well, probably to apologize, prodded by Shiro to be sure, but Pidge hadn’t let him get that far. “If it was your family, would you?”

 

They shouldn’t have been that bitter. It was in the swell of everything afterwards, when they had worked as a team. But Keith’s words were still choking them. They still hadn’t put the memories together.

 

“I don’t know.” Keith had said. “My parents are dead.”

 

He said it the way Matt does sometimes, the plain flat statement of fact of the horrible thing, turning it into a statistic, and Pidge’s hands had started shaking on the dresser drawer  _ Not Dad not Matt not Dad  _ and when they looked up Keith was gone, and the regret curled up in their stomach as they curled up on the floor next to their bed.

 

But Keith’s parent’s weren’t dead, were they? They didn’t know for certain, not about both of them.

 

That’s what Pidge learned, when they all learned about Keith’s heritage, learned that Keith’s mother was Galra, might still be alive. 

 

It wasn’t all that Pidge learned, though. 

 

They were - well, okay, they were more interested in seeing how Galran and human genetic material could  _ possibly  _ work together and might have been comparing their own DNA to the Galran genetic material they - look, surreptitiously snagging a few strands of fur wasn’t the most diplomatic move, but it was for science. 

 

To their credit, Pidge didn’t ask Keith for a cheek swab right as he entered the lab, though it wasn’t far from their mind.

 

“Hey, Keith,”  Pidge said. “Everything alright? Is anything still hurt?”

 

“Huh - no, no. I’m fine.” Keith hovered, then sat down on one of the stools. “I - they made me choose.”

 

Pidge didn’t know exactly what happened, none of them did, except, probably, for Shiro, except that there had been some sort of trials, which was how Keith had gotten injured, and he had activated the knife, which meant he had Galra blood. So they sat and listened. 

 

“The trials - there - Shiro was there.” Keith shook his head, like he could toss the wrong words out like shaking water from his ear. “Fake Shiro. Hologram-thing.” 

 

It’s the wrong time to ask about the hologram technology but that doesn’t mean Pidge didn’t want to ask about the hologram technology.

 

“He - it said to give up on the knife, on finding out the truth about my family. That being a paladin of Voltron should be enough. And I -” Keith wasn’t looking at Pidge. “I let him walk away.”

 

“But - the red lion”

 

Keith shook his head. “That was later. They showed me - they showed me my home. My dad. He said my mother was coming, that I would have all the answers. But - outside, there were Galra ships. People were dying.” The statement of fact, the statistic. “I had the Red Lion. I had to wait or go. And I went. And that’s when -”

 

“That’s what made the red lion -”

 

“Yeah.” 

 

Keith sighed, and they both sat in silence for a moment. 

 

“You asked - what I would do, if it was my - so. I thought - you deserved to know.”

 

“Yeah,”

 

“I don’t know if that makes it - better or worse,” Keith said, with the faintest crack of a smile, rueful.

 

Pidge tilted their head, shrugged, unsure of what to say. Keith fidgeted, looking ready to get up and go. 

 

“You’re still a paladin.” Pidge said, finally finding words tripping off their tongue. “You’re still a paladin of Voltron, no matter what happened in there, no matter what - what you find out about your family. You’re still one of us.”

 

“Yeah,” Keith said, unconvinced. “Don’t know if everyone else thinks that.”

 

“Look, I came a  _ lot  _ closer to leaving than you did, and everyone still accepted me.”

 

“You’re not -”  Keith waved a hand in something that probably means ‘Galra’ but isn’t any intelligible sign language Pidge knows. His hands were shaking a little, like he was going to vibrate out of his own skin. 

 

Pidge thought about it. “Your operating system is different, isn’t it?”

 

Keith looked at him sharply.

 

“Not because you’re -” Pidge wiggles their hand as well, unwilling to be the first to say the word. “But - you’re like me.” Keith just looks at them. “Autistic.” Pidge clarified.

 

Keith shrugged. “Garrison said something about it, but then -” He looked down. “Shiro had been - had been doing some research, for me.”

 

“Oh. Yeah.” Pidge said. There really was no good follow-up to that, was there? “We should stick together. We are the arms of Voltron, after all.”

 

Keith’s eyes widened, a little taken aback. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we are.”

 

Pidge held out their hand. “The arms of Voltron.”

 

Keith took Pidge’s proffered hand. 

 

There are a lot of things Pidge remembers from that conversation, but the one that’s sticking with them right now is what Keith had said about Shiro, the real Shiro, trying to help.

 

It’s a reminder that Keith knew Shiro long before they did, any of them, long before Pidge had ever met Shiro, for that very first time, and knew enough to disbelieve the claims of ‘pilot error’. No one asked how they knew each other before, and they never volunteered details, apart from a half finished reference or a ‘remember that time when -’ that was never elaborated on.

 

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Keith is taking Shiro’s disappearance hardest. 

 

Keith’s meltdowns aren’t like Pidge’s. Pidge yells, sure, and may have hit someone once or twice while lashing out, but they cry through their screams and are more likely to shutdown than anything. Keith - well, there’s a reason he tries to stay in the training room if he feels a meltdown coming on. 

 

He’s been in there a lot. 

 

Pidge sits beside him, Allura wrapping a bandage around his arm from where a training droid had caught him. A tray of cookies sits at the foot of the medbay cot, courtesy of Hunk and Lance.

 

“How - how are you feeling?” Pidge says, as Allura steps away to listen to Coran’s update.

 

Keith moves his shoulder. “Arm’s fine.”

 

“Yeah. That. That wasn’t what I meant.” Pidge says. “You’ve been in the training room a lot, lately.”

 

Keith’s quiet for a moment. “I have to get better. I wasn’t - I wasn’t ready, before, and -”

 

“You don’t have to get better alone. We’re a team.”

 

At Pidge’s words, Keith goes silent. After a moment, he says, “He wanted me to lead Voltron. If anything ever - happened to him.”

 

“Oh,” Pidge says.

 

“He’s not gone. I’m getting him back.” Keith insists. “I lost him once and everyone - everyone else gave up, and I got him back. I’m getting him back again.”

 

“I know.” Pidge says, because they’ve spent so long searching for their family against improbable odds, that they’re the last one to say otherwise. “We’ll get him back.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah.”Keith rests his head in his hands. “I just - I feel like I - I’m failing him. I don’t know if I can lead everyone until -” Keith trails off, puts his head down in his hands. “I should be able to do this.”

 

“You’re not alone.” Pidge says. “We stick together, remember? Arms of Voltron.”

 

“Yeah,” Keith says, looking a little brighter. “Yeah, you’re right.”

 

They are the arms of Voltron. So long as Lance and Hunk can hold them up, they will hold them together.

 

Until they bring Shiro home. 


End file.
